5 minute read
Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship
Sophomore students brainstorm new products and services for a visually impaired market while wearing masks that simulate different levels of visual impairment during an interactive ICE CaPS session. Michael Greco ’12 VSB (right) and his teammates discuss the functionality and design of a new mobile application.
Failure Is an Innovative Option
THE CHALLENGE BEGINS
Just tWo MontHs into Her college career, Megan Earl ’15 VSB learned she would have to develop an idea for an innovative new product. “I was worried,” she says. “I did not consider myself as a very creative person.” Soon enough, however, Earl and her team created iVote, a mobile application designed to drive more young people to vote by providing timely political information on issues and candidates in concise bullet points. “I realized that people claim they don’t participate in voting because they don’t know the details of the elections,” said Earl. “The challenge to think of a new product motivated me to address this problem.” iVote is just one of many ideas that VSB freshmen have developed as part of the ICE Challenge, a project embedded within the first-year Business Dynamics course. Hoping to ignite and nurture the entrepreneurial spirit among students and motivate them to use creativity to succeed, the Center for Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship (ICE Center) designed the ICE Challenge to cultivate these skills at the start of their college education and to help students discover that they are capable of innovation and problem solving. As part of the assignment, the student teams develop a new product or service, write an executive summary, and deliver an in-class pitch. The winning team from each section of Business Dynamics continues on to compete against one another in a larger Villanova event called IdeaBounce®.
Before they decided to create iVote, Earl and her team spent hours brainstorming ideas, which is an important objective of the challenge. “The ICE Challenge was an extraordinary experience that allowed me to use my creativity in a new, business-oriented way,” said Earl. “It showed me that I can take several simple concepts that are seemingly unrelated and turn them into an idea that can bring change to a traditional system. I now have the confidence to know that my thoughts and ideas can make a difference in today’s society.”
DISCOVER YOUR INNER ENTREPRENEUR
tHe ice cHallenGe is Just one example of how the ICE Center has influenced Villanova students. Established in 2009, the center is a driver of scholastic, educational, and professional development opportunities in the related areas of creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship. According to Patrick Maggitti, PhD, the Carmen and Sharon Danella Director of the ICE Center, “in survey after survey, business leaders and executives recognize creative problem solving and entrepreneurial spirit as the most important skills for future leaders—often more important than intelligence.” In response to this growing trend, the ICE Center develops opportunities to embed creative problem solving more deeply in the Villanova culture, providing a safe place for students to fail. “Out of 3,000 ideas, only one will make it to production,” says Maggitti. “We need to encourage our students to think of new ideas and let them know that failure is a positive part of the creative process.”
The ICE Center sponsors and hosts guest speakers, conducts workshops throughout the academic year, and supports the student-run Villanova Entrepreneurial Society, which invites entrepreneurs to campus to address pertinent topics such as starting and funding a new venture or running a family business. Students also have the opportunity to participate in the Villanova Entrepreneurs Network, an alumni-focused networking venue for startup and serial entrepreneurs, accredited angel investors, and service providers. The ICE Center also supports the student-run Villanova Student Entrepreneurship Competition (VSEC), which provides a realistic environment for students to put together and pitch innovative ideas that may result in new ventures. Nearly 150 Villanova students entered the spring 2012 VSEC, compared to just 40 in 2011, evidence that the culture of entrepreneurship is spreading.
THE ICE CENTER INFLUENCE
unDerGraDuate stuDents in VSB and in the College of Engineering have the opportunity to earn a minor in entrepreneurship through an intensive curriculum that teaches the basics of generating ideas, finding opportunities, and starting and managing a new venture. The ICE Center, in conjunction with the Division of Student Life, also helped launch the Innovation, Creativity, and Entrepreneurship Certificate Program for Sophomores (ICE CaPS), a series of workshops and experiences open to all Villanova students to help develop their creative and innovative spirit within a learning community environment. “Creative ideas are almost always the result of the collision of seemingly unrelated knowledge and information,” said Maggitti. “By creating opportunities that bridge across Villanova’s colleges, the potential for this to occur is enormous.”
Last spring, the ICE Center brought together and supported a team of faculty from VSB, the College of Engineering, and the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences to create and teach a unique course focused on the multi-billion-dollar mobile application industry. The interdisciplinary Mobile Device Programming course provides students with both technical and business training, and encourages collaboration and imagination. Thirty junior and senior students—10 from each college—are divided into teams of three, with one student from each college comprising each team. Students choose their own platform— either iPhone or Android—and begin innovating business-related apps. The teams create a business and marketing plan, then pitch the app in a final presentation. Verizon Wireless sponsors this course, supplying Smartphones, data plans, and tech support. The company also sends top-level executives, as guest lecturers, to conduct classes. According to Verizon, this course, along with one at the University of California, Berkeley, is one of the two most innovative in the country to focus on mobile applications.
Verizon was not the only group to recognize this groundbreaking course. The course’s professors—William Wagner, PhD, Associate Professor of Accounting and Information Systems; Frank Klassner, PhD, Associate Professor of Computer Science and Director of Villanova’s Center of Excellence in Enterprise Technology; and Sarvesh Kulkarni, PhD, Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering—won the Global Consortium of Entrepreneurship Centers’ 2011 award for Excellence in Entrepreneurship Teaching and Pedagogical Innovation.
FORGING FORWARD
WitH More ProGraMMatic anD educational offerings being evaluated, the ICE Center plans to enhance and expand its efforts to help students discover new ideas and think entrepreneurially. “For more than a century Villanova University has excelled at developing critical thinkers,” said Maggitti, “and it is incumbent on us to take the next step and develop creative problem solvers for the future. It is far easier to be the art critic than the artist, and we need to be more focused on creating the artist.”
